Marty’s photos of the day #4617-4618: Yesterday Nellie had her final appointment with the surgeon who created her bionic left-rear leg. What you are looking at are two X-rays from that appointment.
The first photo shows a view of five of the six screws inserted into Nellie’s leg. TPLO surgery (Doggie Tommy John) involves removing the CCL (equivalent to an ACL on a human) and cutting and leveling the bone at the knee, so the CCL is no longer needed. Then a metal plate is installed to hold everything together. If you look closely under the second screw, you will see where the bone was cut, leveled, and is now healing back together.
The second photo shows the metal plate that Nellie will have in her leg for the rest of her life.
Nellie’s surgery took place on November 1, and according to Dr. Michael Keast, everything is healing properly. Nellie won’t be able to return to running full-speed until between February 1 and February 15, so we still have to partially restrict her activities until then. The main reason now is that excessive activity too early will actually increase the chance of her putting too much stress on her non-surgery leg and tearing the CCL there. And the last thing we want is to send her back for duplicate surgery on the other leg!
But the worst is over. I’m counting the days until I can see the joy on Nellie’s face when February comes around and she can run at Warp 9 again.